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Phoenix Coldon, a junior at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, has been missing since Dec. 18, 2011. Phoenix was last seen in the driveway of the family's home at about 3 p.m.

The Coldon family lost their life savings and their home because of a cruel hoax that led to a false lead in the disappearance of their daughter.

Please take a moment and let Phoenix's family know you care. Please CLICK HERE and read about the case of missing Phoenix Coldon

Any ball-peen hammer I've seen around a home is a pretty small thing ... such that, when I was a kid, that was 'my' hammer in the basement workshop. I think it would be pretty difficult to kill someone with one in the first few hits (unless hitting target spots, I suppose). I vote the maul.

The problem I have with the maul as murder weapon doesn't have anything to do with whether Sam could swing it. It's not the swing that I think he couldn't handle, although I doubt if he could swing it with any accuracy or actually split wood with it, he could certainly do some serious damage to any part of a person. The recovery time is the issue. It seems to me that if an attacker were attempting to kill 3 different people, speed of attack would be very important. Recovery time after a blow would be critical if speed of attack were necessary.

Look at a maul and how it is used. A typical maul is about 3' long with a straight wooden handle and a 5 to 8 lb. iron or steel wedge shaped head on one end. If it were held by the end away from the head, there would be 24 foot pounds of torque to resist. That's a considerable amount and even someone with very very strong wrist is unlikely to be able to do it and couldn't swing it that way.

To overcome the forces working against him, a user starts a swing with one hand near the end away from the head and the other just below the head. He or she pulls the head close to the body, pushes up and lets the head fall forward while sliding the head hand towards the other. The head hand is pushing and the other is pulling and that leverage helps to accelerate the head along with the acceleration due to gravity. As the hands get closer together, the head reaches maximum acceleration just before impact.

The head stops relatively abruptly with a great deal of force since force = acceleration x mass and the acceleration which just took place over about 2-3 seconds has been decelerated in a tiny fraction of a second. At that point, the user is back to the position of having both hands at the end and being out of control of the other end. To make things worse, the users arms are extended and the wrists are rotated forward, putting him/her at maximum disadvantage in terms of leverage and the head may be stuck in something (use your imagination here). The complete cycle depends on how quickly the user can then move back into position to lift and swing again and the strength of the user and muscle fatigue have to be factored in. Most non-professionals can hardly repeatedly swing a 22oz. framing hammer with a handle length of 16-18" (just over 2 foot pounds of torque) and hitting nails even helps since the hammer bounces to some extent rather than being stuck.

I just don't think Sam had it in him to attack in the first round with a maul. I may well be proven to be wrong I know, but compare Sam to Kuriuz for example. Pixy noted that he is much more appealing than Sam. Part of that is no doubt his blue eyes, but his upright posture and broad round muscular shoulders are a significant part of it and they are in stark contrast to Sam's. The question of how long it took for Sam to lose his appeal upon arrival in Richmond was raised earlier and the general conclusion was that happened almost instantly. Not bathing probably played a role, but that immediate reaction is as much as anything related to body language and posture which are apparent even in the pictures the people making those comment have seen and been influenced by.

Sam may have had shackles on his feet when he made the walk up to the "Jesus told me to" comment, but regardless, just look at his body form, the way his legs move and his shoulders. He is neither strong nor fit, that shows over and over in photos of him, and makes sense for a kid who spends all of his time in a garage listening to awful music. I do however think he could do some serious damage with a ball-peen especially with too much caffeine surging through his system. I've got 4 different sizes in my basement right now, and I don't think anyone here would let me hit them in the head with the smallest. The ball-peen is close to the hatchet in form, grip, and size, and we know Sam had a thing for hatchets. Also, the maul is consistent if I read correctly. All victims were hit with the maul, but only Mr. Neiderbrock was killed with the chunk of wood? Please correct me if any reliable sources say otherwise. That leads me to believe that the maul was used in round 2 and not round 1. If the maul wasn't used on Mr. Neiderbrock, then that leads to a few other questions.

Sorry for such a long post, but I just wanted to make my reasoning clear whether it convinces anyone else or not.

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I believe all of the bodies were found in the mother in law area. This area could be shut off from the rest of the house. The odor could be contained more so there. Visitors could come and go and no one would have any idea.

The pastor's body has been reported as being found "upstairs." If all of the bodies were found in the addition, then there would have to be an upstairs or loft area in that part of the house. Although it's feasible that the cops checked the loft area first, you'd think they would have cleared the downstairs level beforehand. This is such a confusing case. I wish LE would give us more facts.

ETA: I'm actually wondering if the pastor wasn't found in the upstairs of the main house. If the addition has a loft area, why would the pastor have gone up there? And of all the victims he weighed the most so I doubt Sam would have carried him up there.

That seems good, Zig. I guess Mark's body was most likely in the breezeway.

The pastor's body was found in a "upstairs room". Perhaps he was looking for Debra and had gone upstairs to her study or bedroom? (Remember that a pair of stained eyeglasses was found in "one of the bedrooms.") Which is odd because if he was looking for Mel, then he should have gone to Emma's room first.

bolding by me:

Three of the four bodies were found in a downstairs bedroom, the source and court documents said. The other was found in a room upstairs. Authorities believe it is plausible that one or more of the victims might have been attacked while asleep, but they donít know that for sure, the source said. McCroskey has given no statement to police.

And I'm guessing that Debra was killed in the "den" area, perhaps that's the breezeway. It would have been easy for Sam to move her into Debra's room from there.

The documents indicate all three female victims were found in one bedroom.

But evidence from the attacks were found in other rooms. In the den alone, for example, investigators found paper towels with red stains under a chair and under the rug, a stained blue sundress under a chair and a chunk of hair. In one of the bedrooms, investigators found stains on a chair and stained eyeglasses on the floor.

So I'm guessing (for now) that the girls were killed first, while they slept in Emma's room, Debra was killed in the den/breezeway when she went to check in on the kids, and the pastor was killed upstairs when he was searching for Debra to give him some answers about Mel.

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Excellent points. I really do not know how Sam's and Emma's etc myspace pages all poofed after the murders I sort of just assumed maybe myspace got word of the situation and removed the sites but why would they do that chances are they wouldnt even know. So it is a good question, who took down Emma's stuff since she is now dead and all of her family also? I suppose Sam's sister took his stuff down.

Well their myspace pages were gone within like a day or two after the news broke of the murders. No idea who shut them down.

I expect that MySpace has a person or person(s) whom they employ that are responsible for taking down pages for various reasons. They take down pages of dead people so that other people won't leave objectionable messages which might be distressing to the families for example. Also for copyright infringement, libel, etc. Anything they might get sued over.

I thought the household list seemed thin for a quadruple murder. Maybe they didn't release stuff having to do with...bodies or parts of?

I won't be surprised to learn that "red stains" were just the SKR logo printed on the notebook. I don't think the officers at the scene were very likely going to try and determine which blood splatters were real and which were fake. They'd leave that up to the lab.

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Debra Kelley is the only one we see in glasses in photos. Where were the stained glasses found? Actually, if we can at least tentatively hook up any of the items with a specific person, we might be able to guess where the killing took place, whether there was movement of the body. Maybe I should go back to the docs and look at his, huh?

....I'm glad ziggy that you havn't been through any horror in your life it seems but a lot of us have....a family member that I loved very much killed himself when I was 10,I was raped by a married u.s. army sergeant when I was 13...and after that I found comfort in metal,in accepting "dark" stuff as part of life,I don't want to be a rain on anyone's parade but I'm in this because I also just like you believe we are in control of our own happiness and we have to control our emotions and rage and never let it out on others...but i think it's important to find out what is going on in people's head's that commit this stuff so it can be prevented,and it needs to start early,I'm not that smart and i don't have all that education a lot of you guys have and everything i post just comes from my heart even though it's a dark place at times...people just need to learn to be strong and deal with it...and if "dark" stuff helps,so be it...I love Marilyn Manson,btw,thanks danger for posting that video.....and i don't think it's fair for people to post how sorry they feel for the boy that was at that festival because they don't know what kind of experience he had there....if his parents love him it could have been positive,he could have had the time of his life....

claudicici, first of all please take care of yourself. This sort of tragedy in your life can have long lasting effects,it is something you can pass on to your children and even their children if you aren't careful. My ex was raped when she was a young person like yourself. Unfortunately she didn't tell anyone about it until after she got addicted to prescription medications, wrecked her marriage, and lost her children. Her parents put her out on the street when she was 14 because she was "wild" or some ****. idk what they were thinking and despite the last ten years of sitting on my ass also known as meditation I don't think I will ever forgive them.

As far as intelligence, I know a lot of smart people that don't use their brains. Keep using yours. And don't confuse knowledge of factual information with intelligence or vision or wisdom. I spend my days researching things so tend to know a lot of factual information about a very wide variety of topics. And I am a professional researcher so I know how to find out the things I don't know about already. The fact that I am very good at this tends to rub people the wrong way. I am very very used to it for example in my professional life. When I came to this board I knew exactly what was going to happen, I just didn't know who was going to attack me. But I found out soon enough

Anyhow, like many of the other posters here I feel focusing on the dark side is potentially dangerous. You know I like some dark music including (now) some horrorcore. But I'm also a DJ and I play mostly funky house music, electro, and breaks. Some of it might have a dark sound, but it is music about love and sex. It celebrates life it doesn't denigrate it.

I grew up on heavy metal and proto-metal. I was there when punk invaded the west coast and I saw a lot of people taken down by heavy drug abuse in that scene. That was as dark as we could find back in the day. I survived it. Some (e.g. my ex) didn't. Like I told my oldest son (who turns 18 in three weeks) the thing with drugs (and also dark violent music) is that there are some people that can handle it and some that can't. The problem is that you don't know which one you are until it is too late.

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claudicici, first of all please take care of yourself. This sort of tragedy in your life can have long lasting effects,it is something you can pass on to your children and even their children if you aren't careful. My ex was raped when she was a young person like yourself. Unfortunately she didn't tell anyone about it until after she got addicted to prescription medications, wrecked her marriage, and lost her children. Her parents put her out on the street when she was 14 because she was "wild" or some ****. idk what they were thinking and despite the last ten years of sitting on my ass also known as meditation I don't think I will ever forgive them.

As far as intelligence, I know a lot of smart people that don't use their brains. Keep using yours. And don't confuse knowledge of factual information with intelligence or vision or wisdom. I spend my days researching things so tend to know a lot of factual information about a very wide variety of topics. And I am a professional researcher so I know how to find out the things I don't know about already. The fact that I am very good at this tends to rub people the wrong way. I am very very used to it for example in my professional life. When I came to this board I knew exactly what was going to happen, I just didn't know who was going to attack me. But I found out soon enough

Anyhow, like many of the other posters here I feel focusing on the dark side is potentially dangerous. You know I like some dark music including (now) some horrorcore. But I'm also a DJ and I play mostly funky house music, electro, and breaks. Some of it might have a dark sound, but it is music about love and sex. It celebrates life it doesn't denigrate it.

I grew up on heavy metal and proto-metal. I was there when punk invaded the west coast and I saw a lot of people taken down by heavy drug abuse in that scene. That was as dark as we could find back in the day. I survived it. Some (e.g. my ex) didn't. Like I told my oldest son (who turns 18 in three weeks) the thing with drugs (and also dark violent music) is that there are some people that can handle it and some that can't. The problem is that you don't know which one you are until it is too late.

Take care.

I'm really sorry about your ex.....back then i tried many drugs but luckily never got into any of them...i don't like not feeling in control....lol,i guess that's why i don't like techno,house music and stuff either,if i listen to that for a while it puts me like in a different mind set,it makes me kind of high,i guess....anyways I guess it's always good when there's a balance

Debra Kelley is the only one we see in glasses in photos. Where were the stained glasses found? Actually, if we can at least tentatively hook up any of the items with a specific person, we might be able to guess where the killing took place, whether there was movement of the body. Maybe I should go back to the docs and look at his, huh?

the glasses where found in the bedroom with the bodies,I wonder about the blue sun dress ,isn't that something debra would more likely wear than emma? that was found in the den....i wished we knew for sure the "den" is the "breezeway"....and aparently the dress wasn't on a person,so did sam take it off?...or did he just use it to wipe something up?...that area "den" seems to be the only place where he attempted some sort of clean up maybe ?

the glasses where found in the bedroom with the bodies,I wonder about the blue sun dress ,isn't that something debra would more likely wear than emma? that was found in the den....i wished we knew for sure the "den" is the "breezeway"....and aparently the dress wasn't on a person,so did sam take it off?...or did he just use it to wipe something up?...that area "den" seems to be the only place where he attempted some sort of clean up maybe ?

The sundress is quite mysterious, and I agree it doesn't sound like something Emma was going to wear.

I'm really sorry about your ex.....back then i tried many drugs but luckily never got into any of them...i don't like not feeling in control....lol,i guess that's why i don't like techno,house music and stuff either,if i listen to that for a while it puts me like in a different mind set,it makes me kind of high,i guess....anyways I guess it's always good when there's a balance

You say the music gets you high without drugs like that's a bad thing

Balance is good, but some things can only be accomplished through extreme excess. For example, a few years back I went to the Winter Music Conference in Miami. 200 parties in 6 days...

Has to be splatter - better even than on a wall, you bring it to the lab and you bring it into court - you don't have to just use photos.

Wet Hair this one is freaking me a little. The supposed chunk of hair that the maggots were collected from that was located in the den is described as "wet" hair. Really? How many days later from when the body it was attached to was killed? Why is it wet? Does decaying matter not dry? Sorry that's so graphic.

Except you have to maintain a proper chain of custody.

Wet hair is pretty graphic. I took some forensic science classes in college so I would have some background after law school. Decaying bodies do a lot of interesting things. Its probably body matter, but probably not the type of "wet' you'd think of (ie, just got out of the shower wet hair).

I am pretty sure he's just going to give the presentation (or one very similar to it) that I linked earlier in this thread. Still it would be interesting to have someone on the ground there. Or maybe we can arrange to phone in some questions for him? lol probably not.

Andres, I am having a terrible time trying to keep up. I get overly busy with my startup and end up needing to stay away for a few days. When I return, there are 20 more pages of messages :-) So I hope you'll forgive me asking: how do we know that the letter/note was to Mel? I know there was speculation that her father might have left a note for her with Sam, but has that been established beyond mere speculation? Maybe we are thinking of different notes, though I admit it is very likely that I missed a followup message after the first post mentioning the note/letter. On the other hand, there is certainly nothing wrong with speculation!

I ask because I was speculating otherwise :-D One possible explanation for (one of?) the handwritten note(s) was that Sam wrote it as part of a bumbling attempt at alibi. He mentioned to some driver or another that he waited for his girlfriend to fall asleep and left before she awoke. Perhaps that conversation combined with a phony goodbye note, ala "Sorry Emma, I love you but it's not working out. I had to leave thx for the hospitality <333333333" was meant to introduce reasonable doubt regarding his involvement in her murder.

Some have already speculated that his call to the police about spooky sounds in the basement might have been an attempt at misdirection as well. To be clear, I am not insinuating that this would be a sensible move; rather, it seems a pretty hopeless act. But he was almost certainly desperate at one point or another, and he might have become convinced that "it's just like I told that driver" + "scary sounds in the basement, after all if I murdered them OF COURSE I wouldn't call the cops" + "see, I even left a bittersweet goodbye note" was better than nothing.

If the police wanted to show that the note (and, perhaps by implication, his other attempts at establishing doubt) should be not given credence, they might want to link the note to the sharpies that were found, especially if said sharpies might be linked to trace blood evidence. Should they be able to establish such a link, it would evidence the theory that he wrote the note only after the poor victims had been murdered.

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Nothing wrong with speculation, or presumuption, as that's what we're doing here. The note is mentioned in the warrants. I meant to document which warrants said what.

I'm not sure your blood evidence on sharpies theory works though. Blood could have gotten on the sharpies before or after the girls were murdered. Though, they would use the sharpies to determine whether he wrote the note.